


the quality of mercy (is no business of yours)

by ishouldwritethatdown, someawkwardprose



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Torture, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Morally Ambiguous Character, Mute Corvo Attano, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25957768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown, https://archiveofourown.org/users/someawkwardprose/pseuds/someawkwardprose
Summary: The Loyalists wanted a weapon. They got him instead.
Relationships: Corvo Attano & Emily Kaldwin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 87





	the quality of mercy (is no business of yours)

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from Michael Shepherd's 'the quality of mercy (conditions apply)' 
> 
> awkward: hey I had a three am writing spree  
> r: hey what if I expanded on it  
> awkward: nice, lemme just add- 
> 
> and so this fic was born.

He does not kill them.

There is a moment, in Coldridge Prison, where he makes the decision. His mysterious allies had left him a sword, and the combination to a safe across a complex filled with guards who wouldn’t hesitate to gut him. He could have killed them and justified it to himself. He should. He _wants_ to, because he knows these guards. They are the men that have delighted in taunting him, beating him, throwing his meagre rations into the floor coated in rat droppings for the last six months. Unlike the Interrogator, they want nothing from him, no confession to be signed. Their only concern is that they have power, and he does not. None of them served in Dunwall Tower or had ever met him before his incarceration, but many seemed to have taken it as a personal slight that he, a Serkonan man with a working mother, had spent most of his life next to the most important person in the Empire.

He wants to watch the lights fade out of their eyes the same way they watched the humanity drain out of his own, for every day he came closer to his execution and further from any chance of ever finding Emily. He wants to hurt them. 

But Corvo Attano has only killed twice in his life - once, in defence of Beatrici, and once for Jessamine. He won the Blade Verbena two years before he could legally compete. He is good with blades and pistols, and excellent at fighting hand to hand, but he is not a killer. Not at heart.

He will not let them make him one.

So he hooks his arm around the guards’ necks one by one, in the perfect Tyvian chokehold that he had promised to demonstrate for Emily almost a year ago (he’ll teach her, as soon as he finds her, he promises himself) and piles them on top of one another. They will wake up when he is far away, with sore heads, but alive, which is more than they deserve. 

When the detonation shakes Coldridge and he leaps from the gaping hole it left, he has a few glorious seconds of airtime.

 _Emily, I'm coming_ , he tells the wind. _It's alright, Corvo's coming. I promise._

He won't meet his charge with bloodied hands and a blackened soul. His duties as Royal Protector demanded ferocity, but he will not sharpen himself into a point. He will not become hard-hearted. Jess had always loved him for his gentleness; and he for hers. Emily can no longer look to Jessamine, but she will have him. 

***

The people at the Hound Pits Pub find him surprising. "Campbell taken care of without a drop of blood spilled," Martin comments, and Corvo does not bristle. "Impressive." 

_Shove it_ , he wants to say, in all the passion of his own tongue. _I am not your loaded gun, aimed and ready to fire. I am not your weapon._

He doesn't give a damn about the conspiracy, or politics. He has never had any concerns about Gristol’s gentry, or the ambassadors and treaties and trade routes and meaningless social stratums that force him to dress the part of a noble at court. He doesn’t even give a damn about clearing his name, not really, because he knows his own innocence. All he needs - all he cares about - is Emily. 

But Coldridge had taken a lot from him, and the empty space in his mouth aches with phantom pain. He didn't need a tongue to sign a confession, after all. So he says nothing, when most of his fingers are splinted or bandaged and he is not equipped in mind or body to reply. Martin studies his silence carefully, a hawk perched and watching always, but Havelock's boisterous nature breaks the moment, and they are suddenly men again, and not birds.

The Admiral slaps him on the back, ignoring Corvo's flinch. "I'm glad to see we didn't make a mistake with you," he says with a smile. 

_Oh, you did,_ he thinks, because crows are not predators, but men are. _You just don't know it yet._

*** 

It’s complicated. It’s always complicated, where living people are concerned. It would all be a lot simpler if everybody simply died, and there was no worrying about inheritance or succession or any of the troubling things that living people worried about. But if a complex web of deals, arrangements, and commissions is what it takes to protect Emily from the evils of the world, then that is what he will have to engage in.

Slackjaw and he make a deal, and finally, _finally_ , he finds what he is looking for. His hands are clean, and while the mask is monstrous, it is not the horror Piero thought it would be without the bloodstains. 

His hands are shaking when he reaches for his face to remove the mask. It isn’t a smooth and perfect reunion; it is filled with tears, and snot, and fumbled exclamations of “Corvo, it’s you!” and an unbalanced attempt to swing his daughter around in the air. She is his little sparrow, so small as to rest in the palm of his hand, and he will put her carefully into his pocket so that he may never lose her again. She's taller than he remembers her, her hair shaggier, but even without the strength in his arms he used to have, she’s lighter too. The six long months of the separation have been kind to neither of them, and so he knows he has made the right choices. He must be kind, because the world was not. He must not turn the streets of her city into rivers of blood. He holds her tight, and her grip is almost painful, but she's alive, and soon she will be safe. 

“You’re wearing a mask to sneak around, aren’t you,” she grins, a mischievous light in her eyes. When he nods, her smile falters, and his heart sinks. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice so quickly. She brushes her fingers against his lips, where the Interrogator was clumsy with the razor. "Corvo," she whispers. "Corvo, your mouth…" 

He doesn't want to show her, but she's always been demanding, and she pries his jaw wide so she can see. Her eyes well with tears that he thinks are more angry than sad. She pulls his head down to her neck, the way her mother always did when he was upset. He closes his eyes, and although she doesn’t say anything else, he feels it when she thinks that she should have been there to protect him, too. He remembers a day when she was young and she asked him, concerned, who protected the Royal Protector.

 _It's not like I talked much before,_ he doesn't think, although it’s true – but he always read her bedtime stories, with the voices. The soft-spoken prose he stringed together was not for the ears of nobles, whether it was in Gristish or not. He reserved his words for Emily, and now all of the ones he had saved up in Coldridge – the _I love you_ s and _sleep well_ s and the stories about pirates and witches who were queens – were lost to the Void.

 **_your hands are clean, and she will remember that even when she can no longer hold them,_ ** the Heart murmurs. **_she will not want to disappoint you._ ** ****

Corvo does not want for a world where Emily is forced to remind herself to be soft, as he must do. But she is her mother's daughter, and he knows that Jessamine could be as hard as steel, that it was necessary and beautiful and true to her core. An honest sense of justice that was admirable and made to last. But Emily is only a girl, and her sharpest point should be the end of her pencils. He must give her as much of her childhood softness to hang onto as he can.

***

Emily likes Samuel, and Callista, and Cecelia. She tolerates Wallace with the sort of patience that Corvo remembered her mother using for Lord Percy, the steward at the beginning of her reign, who had been pompous and judgemental. She can't decide if she likes Lydia or not, and Corvo suspects that this is because she senses that although Lydia shows respect for the Empress, she does not quite see Emily as a person, only a figurehead (Corvo cannot hold this against her; ever since the Olaskirs pushed the divinity of the throne, Emperors and Empresses could take on an almost mythical status. On top of that, Emily has been a phantom in the city of Dunwall for six months). She does, somehow, like Martin – because he speaks to her like she is an adult, Corvo supposes.

She dislikes Pendleton, and does a very astute impression of his words coming from the buck-teeth and mannerisms of a weasel, when Callista’s back is turned. A _drunk_ weasel, she is quick to remind Corvo, and he wishes she did not have to see the so-called noble’s unsavory habits. And, although it does not stop her from asking thousands of questions about the Navy and the sea, she is uneasy around Havelock, too proud to admit to such a thing as fear.

 **_she is a good judge of character,_ ** the Heart whispers. **_like her father._ **

Corvo does not deign to answer. 

He writes to her, in his messy untidy scrawl, and requests that she tell _him_ stories about pirates and Golden Cat patrons and about kings being rescued by princesses. It is animated and lively, and he suspects that she may attempt to derail their future lessons in order to make shadow puppets for the stories she intends to tell. He isn’t sure whether Emily or Callista will win that battle of wills, but he looks forward to its results.

When he returns from Kaldwin’s Bridge with Sokolov snoring over his shoulder, he selfishly hopes that Emily has denied her governess the satisfaction of getting her to bed on time. But Emily is already sleeping when he gets to her tower, and Callista informs him in a hushed voice that she only just drifted off. He thinks that perhaps if he spent less time eliminating the rats beneath the warehouse, or rescuing the prospective subjects from the City Watch and the wall of light, he could have made it back in time to wish her goodnight. But he does not allow himself to wish that he had gone back and changed his actions.

"She has nightmares, poor thing," Callista tells him, trying to soothe Emily as she tosses and turns in her sleep. "It’s okay, Emily. I’m here. You’re safe."

He sits down at her bedside, his legs crossed on the floor, and he has no words of comfort like Callista. Emily’s distress leaks into the waking world from her dreams, and she whimpers his name. When she was a baby, she used to stop crying when he laid her down on his chest, and they would feel each others’ heartbeats. The nursemaid would stress, would say it wasn’t his job, but she knew that if she took the baby, she would wake her. There was a drawing Jessamine had done, saved in his diary under the floorboards of his room in Dunwall Tower, of him dozing on the chez in her chambers, Emily on his chest with her thumb in her mouth.

He strokes Emily’s head, and finds his hand doesn’t want to leave her cheek. He picks her up, ignoring the protests that Callista tried to raise in only a whisper and a scandalised look. He carries her across the walkway and into his chambers, and lays her in his own bed. He tries to wake himself every time he starts to doze – he cannot risk hurting her with his nightmares – but she settles, cradled in his arms with their heartbeats together, and soon enough, he does too.

They never talk about it, but after that, sometimes she crawls into his bed sobbing, and Corvo holds her as she cries herself to sleep while they think of Jessamine.

*** 

The three Ladies Boyle all look resplendent in their rich dress, and Corvo grits his teeth. The world is burning down around them, and here they are, throwing parties. It seems extreme even by their usual opulent standards, flaunting their wealth and their disregard for the restrictions placed on imports. The food is exotic, the wine is vintage, and the outfits of everyone present are made by people who are underpaid and overworked. It makes him sick.

But. Not sick enough to kill Waverly Boyle.

Not enough to hand her over to her unsavoury secret admirer. Corvo doesn’t need the Heart to tell him what it is Brisby’s after, what little regard he has for the consent of the woman he claims to love.

He borrows a business card from William Trimble’s back pocket and writes Waverly a note. He slips it in her pocket and watches from across the room when she discovers it, looking all around the parlour for the culprit. He can see the way her hands tremble as she reads it. She sees him watching, in the mask people had been making remarks about all night. He nods his head once, and he can see the steel and determination in her core as she signals to her sisters.

She catches him by one of the fireplaces in a mostly empty room, and talks quietly, but they don’t face each other. He is watching her reflection in one of the shining plaques on the wall. "I have-- a bolt hole,” she tells him. “ _He_ doesn't know about it. Esma and Lydia... they've never liked him. They won't tell," he hears her swallow, take a slightly shaky breath. "Did - did he really kill her?" 

The Loyalists were otherwise thorough, and Pendleton seems to have a bottomless number of anecdotes about the Boyles for his memoirs, but what they had failed to mention in Corvo’s briefing was that the Boyle family had helped Euhorn get the throne. He thinks the information had been kept from him deliberately, in the hope that he would eliminate a key player in Dunwall’s aristocracy with the same blow as removing a figure of influence on the throne, but Corvo has been Jessamine’s shadow for two decades, and understands more than the ‘Loyalists’ think he does. Loyalty is a fickle thing amongst nobles, but they are proud of their family history, and Waverly Boyle would not so easily go against her father’s alliances as Burrows might hope. Lord Boyle had put the Kaldwins on the throne, and so his daughters could not condone the assassination of one.

Corvo inclines his head. Waverly sits down in an armchair by the fire, heavily and without the grace of a lady. "And I helped him. _Void_ , I helped him. And you -" she looks up, and though he can’t see her eyes through the mesh that covers them in her mask, he can hear her voice. There are tears in it. "- how can you forgive me, Lord Protector?" 

_I don't,_ he thinks. But he takes the business card back from Waverly and he writes, _Emily will need your support._

"And you showed me mercy," she says, her voice thin and laced with understanding. Corvo does not like court, does not care about court, but he knows and she knows that his mercy could reach its end at any time he chooses. He will not choose a time, because he has made a promise to Emily and to himself, but she doesn’t need to know that. "Very well," she says and stands, once again the dignified lady and host of the last party at Boyle Manor for some time. She speaks in a less hushed tone, but her words are carefully chosen. "You won't hear from me again until it’s over. Good luck, sir. For _her_ sake."

***

 **"My dear Corvo, you always surprise me. First with Campbell, then the Pendletons, now Lady Boyle,"** the Outsider says. **"When does your mercy end? Will you also spare Hiram Burrows, for all he’s done? Is that truly what your beloved Empress would want, or are you simply finding excuses not to dirty your hands? Not to get involved in the riff-raff of the Loyalist Conspiracy, to wipe your hands of this mess when it’s over and say** **_It wasn’t me_ ** **? I wonder."**

Emily never liked Burrows. Once in a public appearance when she was a baby, he held her in front of the crowd, and she cried and cried and cried. The Royal Spymaster was not a position that was meant to be public-facing, but now that it was a publically-known position, now that people knew how indispensable spymasters were in the running of a country, people wanted to see it. The Regent Spymaster that bridged the Olaskir and Kaldwin dynasties had been beloved by the young prince Sobik, and somebody – Corvo never found out exactly who – had thought it was a good idea to suggest a similar fondness between Hiram and Emily. But Hiram was crooked and lacking in compassion, and Emily had refused to stop crying until Corvo took her out of the Spymaster’s hands. Jessamine had always said the Spymaster needed to be a devious sort, but Hiram Burrows wasn't just devious, he was slimy. He was an arm wrapped around your shoulders as he slipped the dagger in. He didn't _deserve_ mercy.

He thinks that what Burrows deserves is the feeling of staring at the mildewy, dark brick walls of a prison cell and waiting for somebody to announce the day you are going to die.

 **"You are gentler than you think you are,"** the Outsider remarks. **"And crueler than you know."**

The twitch of Corvo’s mouth is more a baring of teeth than a grin.

He knows what he is.

*** 

"When we go home, do I have to take Mother's room?" 

Corvo catches his bottom lip with his teeth. He is glad his long hair hides his eyes for a moment, so Emily doesn’t see the ghosts flitting behind them.

Jessamine's bedroom is the most defensible room in the Tower, including Burrows' so-called safe-room. It is not easily accessible by any of the entrances to the building, including the rooftops, and there is a secret passageway that runs between the Imperial chambers and the Royal Protector’s quarters. Unlike Emily's childhood rooms in the Tower, it is fit for an Empress.

But to Emily it will always be her mother's bedroom. It will always be the bedroom she would sneak into early in the morning, to rouse her mother at the crack of dawn – and once, the only time it had ever happened, rouse Corvo as well. It will always be drenched in the memories of how she would run away from Corvo, squealing and squirming and clambering all over the furniture while Jessamine laughed. It will be the room in which there were no secrets, and no need to hide, yes, but it would always be home to Jessamine's ghost. 

He shakes his head. _No._

"I - I think I could do it," she says, but her voice trembles. 

He shakes his head again and mouths the word _No_ . The words _you don't have to,_ are unsaid but correctly received, and she nods, going back to her drawing. It would be cruel to make Emily move into her mother’s rooms, when the prospect of returning to the comforts of home have been dangled in front of her for weeks. It is going to be busy at the Tower, when she returns, before the coronation and after. There will be enough new things to get used to without worrying about waking up in a different bed. _We can leave it alone. For a little while._

They will have to get a new bed anyway. No child wants the mattress they were conceived on, after all.

*** 

Corvo should have known to expect betrayal. 

Maybe, if he'd had his tongue, he would have tasted the poison in his whisky. Maybe, if he hadn't been high on adrenaline, if he hadn't been so high on the knowledge that Emily was safe now—

When his stomach turns and he sees his hand dipping into a mirror of grey clouds, he isn’t sure if he’s in the Void or on a boat. He isn’t sure if he’s going to throw up or start screaming from the pain in his gut, and he remembers hazily Samuel’s apology. Separating dream from memory is difficult, he is aware for a moment, before the thought flits away like a silverfish in a stream. The voices of Martin and the Admiral discuss his fate behind whaling masks. He feels the lurch of his raft being hefted by a crane and tries to prepare himself for the long drop from the plague cart into the flooded district’s muck with all the other corpses.

 **_be brave, my Corvo,_ ** his Heart whispers. **_you will not die today._ **

***

Jessamine is, as ever, completely right. 

His hands are still clean when he makes his way back to the Hound Pits. Daud will punish himself more than Corvo ever could, in the end. And he was only the knife. Unlike Corvo, he will never be able to sleep easy again.

Corvo regrets the blood spilled at the Hound Pits Pub although it doesn’t dirty his own hands. He feels sorry for Wallace, who was loyal to his many faults to a man who regarded him so little as to leave him lying in the muck with a bullet in the back of his head. However it is Lydia he truly mourns for, with her stubborn need to provide for her guests and off-hand jokes she threw to a silent man who was no longer sure he could laugh. Joplin and Sokolov, he has mixed feelings on, and he resents the way the world, the Void, the powerful people of Dunwall repeatedly prod him towards cruelty. He does not want ash on his hands either. He does not want to turn this place into a graveyard, even if it has been robbed of its status as a safe haven. Callista and Cecelia, he is glad to see, glad that they were quick enough or lucky enough to save themselves from the bloodshed.

Samuel, he is even gladder. He underlines _Kingsparrow Island_ on the missive he found in the bar and hands it to him. Their destination. An end to this, he hopes. "I'm glad you're okay, son," he says, and Corvo lets him rest a steadying hand on his shoulder before he returns his attention to the skiff, and they begin to move.

"I'm proud to know you," Samuel says, when they arrive. "You're a good daddy to that girl, and you'll teach her the right lessons. You're a good man, Corvo." 

_I'm not good or bad_ , he doesn't say, as he is left alone on the shore of the island. _I'm just better than them._

But his words mean more to Corvo than Samuel will ever know. 

Pendleton and Martin are already dead when he reaches the Lighthouse. There are no guards on the stairs, or the war room, or anywhere except the walkway from the elevator. Just Havelock on his way out, talking to the corpses of his allies. His drink held the same poison as the others.

"Why?" he asks, when Corvo forces him to throw up, to down a canteen of water. "Why?" 

Corvo doesn’t dignify the question with a response. Perhaps Hiram Burrows could do with a cellmate. The two men had a lot in common after all.

Then—

"Corvo!" Emily swings up into his arms as easily as ever, and he spins her around, resting his forehead against hers. "I knew you would come."

 _I will always come for you,_ he does not say, but he thinks she hears it anyway. _Always._

***

Hiram Burrows is the rat plague's final victim in the Empire of the Isles. He dies messily. Corvo doesn't watch, but he does smile, when he hears. Havelock spends the rest of his days in Her Majesty’s Penitentiary, with a nice view of the Tower and the sea. They say he died of longing. Corvo wonders for which one.

 **"The Lord Protector, reinstated. Regent, practically. Well done, Corvo. You have managed what all those men grasped for, without dirtying your hands in the process,"** the Outsider says. 

_I am not a killer_ , he signs, haltingly. He does not say, _I did not do this for power. I do not want your congratulations._ The Outsider understands his meaning anyway. 

**"Not a killer, no. But you are not a saint, either,"** he says. **"It's all very fascinating."**

Corvo glares at him. In a gesture universally recognised throughout the Isles, he tells the old leviathan to _get fucked._

The Outsider flashes his whale teeth, and vanishes into smoke or ash or shadows. All that remains is the faint smell of salt, and the laughter Corvo hears ringing in his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> emily kaldwin came by that bastard energy honestly, and you know we're right.


End file.
